The Real Blogger Status

Some new blog owners spend time examining the various settings provided by Blogger, in the dashboard. Some dashboard settings inspire questions, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More about Blogger . As helpers there, we know from experience that some questions, asked and answered there, will lead to later questions in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . The "Robots.Txt" file is one feature which inspires these types of questions. I was updating my settings on Blogger, and I discovered some settings that I didn't understand. What do I add for "Custom robot text" and "Custom robot header tag"? When I was young, my mother used to provide advice "That is a well enough!" - as the proper answer, to this question, is to "Leave well enough alone!".

Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we see a plaintive query How do I remove my blog from using Draft Blogger? Some blog owners use Draft Blogger because of a specific problem - then discover later, that use of Draft Blogger, in general, is not a good idea .

We're seeing some confusion in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , mentioning mysterious comments, published against new blog posts. Each time I publish a new post, there is one comment immediately published against the post, which is just a repeat of the post! This blog owner is using both automatic post shares, and Google+ comments.

Recently, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , we've seen reports of problems using "Create a new blog". I can't create another blog! It worked fine, earlier today - but now, it tells me that I'm not allowed!! Some would be blog owners are apparently running into a new Blogger limit - daily blog creation. Apparently, Blogger is now limiting creation of new blogs. Similar to the legendary daily posting limit in our blogs, the daily new blog limit appears to be fuzzy - possibly, intentionally so, to adjust for ongoing spam activity.

The recent Blogger redesign of the Pages list / Pages gadget has caused some confusion. How do I create a "Web address" page? and How do I hide a page? and even How do I edit a "Web address" page? Once you understand how to use the newly designed Pages gadget, it's not complicated do each of the above. Then there are those who want to rename the Home page - which used to be obvious. Just use the Pages gadget . Look under “Pages to show”. There’s the box, containing “Home” (in the language of the blog). Type a new value for “Home”. Hit “Save”. Done. That's how it used to work. Now, you can hit "Save" all that you want. It just won't accomplish anything.

The Custom Domain Ownership Verification requirement has been with us for over a year - and we still see confusion, and easily corrected mistakes . One of the most frustrating mistakes involves mistyping of the details. I keep getting an "Error 12". My registrar insists that the DNS addresses are right. But, the registrar must be wrong, since the blog just can't be published! When you type the base domain DNS addresses, into the registrar's zone editor, eyeballing what you type is somewhat obvious. Either you get it right - or you don't. Typing the domain ownership verification details, on the other hand, is not so simple.

We see this question, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , a couple times / year. Can I keep using a Classic template on my blog - or must I upgrade? Right now, Blogger won't require anybody to upgrade. You can stay with a Classic template, if you want. That said, there is no guarantee that the next major Blogger problem will not leave Blogger Engineering deciding to cut their losses, and move forward. If we can get Blogger back online with Layout and better today - as opposed to Classic templates, next week - let's drop Classic templates, and bring it back, today. They've moved forward, this way, in the past - and next week, they could, again. Eventually, this will happen. One day, Blogger will come back online - but without your blog.

We've known, for a while, the dangers of logging in with the wrong Blogger account . My dashboard has no blogs!! or My Reading List is empty! Blog owners and readers, alike, have been reporting this problem, for years. With the new Google multi account login , this problem has become more noticeable, for some blog owners and readers. My Blogger account was merged, to an an account with an empty dashboard. Sometimes, the dashboard lacks blogs - at other times, it lacks menu items, or reading list entries. In either case, the account owner needs to login to a different Blogger account .

A week ago, Blogger redesigned the dashboard wizards, that are used to setup and maintain pages . The most visible change involved a complete redesign of the Pages wizard . Now, mirroring the look and feel of the Posts wizard, the Pages wizard has a pages index / menu - with layout, button / link set, and similar features resembling the Posts wizard. To make the new Pages wizard design fit in, the Pages wizard now only indexes and maintains "static" pages. Conversely, "dynamic" pages are maintained using the Layout "Pages" gadget. Archive retrievals. External links. Label searches. Additionally, all other Pages functions have been relocated, and are also provided under the Pages gadget, in the Layout wizard. This redesign did not go unnoticed, among the blog owners.